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What do you think is the most likely reason for a water grid shutdown? It isn’t terrorism and it isn’t pollution. The answer is, the age of the infrastructure used to deliver the water or collect the sewage. Think about the city you live in. Chances are it has existed for hundreds of years, if not longer. Most cities water systems grow in phases. They keep adding to the network every year as the population grows. The end result is most cities have infrastructure that range from less than a year to hundreds of years and with many different materials. I have seen water mains made of wood in service as late as 2011. Like any piece of equipment it all has a useful lifespan, beyond that lifespan failures become increasingly more likely to be catastrophic. The result is a large volume and dollar amount of material and equipment that needs repairs or to be replaced.

Normally the stress on water systems comes from population growth. A water main that was ok in the 1980’s may not be large enough for today’s population. As cities infill and build higher density buildings they frequently overburden the water systems. Either causing contamination or total failure of the system.

Older equipment is also more susceptible to natural disasters, terrorism and human accidents. These three things can break a new system too, however they don`t have to try as hard with the older systems.

Climate change is having an affect too. As severe weather events are on the rise, storm sewers might be found lacking, as was the case in Calgary, Alberta and Toronto, Ontario recently. The system was grossly undersized for the amount of rain that fell. They said things like “it was a month’s worth of rain in one day” on the news. When the fact is, it once was a months worth of rain, and is now something more frequent, lets say a weeks worth of rain. I’m not suggesting we build our systems to meet a 1000 year storm, but I am suggesting that our current idea of a 100 year storm may be an underestimation and that the error is getting worse. To bring it back to infrastructure, if we are built to the current 100 year storm levels, what happens if the 100 year storms are getting worse? We will find out in the not too distant future.

What are the options for people to take? The first and most important thing to do is to plan ahead and replace older parts of the system before they fail. A $50,000 job to replace an old section of pipe at a time you choose is a lot cheaper than waiting for it to fail at the time you are least prepared. If you are connected to a public utility, ask them about their equipment replacement plan. If they are not looking 25 years into the future or longer then ask them why not? If you have private systems, you need to ask the same questions. Can you afford to replace the septic system when it fails? Or can you afford to dig/drill a new well when the casing cracks?

As you can probably surmise the addition of more people + more rain + more water and more sewage means system failures will become more frequent and probably for longer periods of time. What does this mean to the average person? Plan for system failure. Have a backup system ready to go when it does. Know the age of your equipment and it`s expected lifetime. That way you wont be caught off guard.

This is my latest article on what is important for rebuilding society after a societal collapse. Agriculture is important for obvious reasons. Without an adequate food supply there is no possibility for any society. Agriculture is the only long term method for managing the food supply. Hunting and gathering take too much time and area for current populations. Storing food is very temporary and doesn’t last very long. Trading for food is something many countries do today, but this is dependent on a very reliable transportation network.

The lowest level of sustainable agriculture is subsistence agriculture. This means the levels of production from agriculture are just enough to sustain your own existence (or your family’s existence). Subsistence agriculture is very time intensive. It leaves you with little to no time for other things like education, construction and any other form of employment. Societies heavy with subsistence agriculture are also societies rampant with poverty. Subsistence farming is not a way to grow a society, it is merely a way to survive. After a societal collapse, subsistence farming will become common place. Those with knowledge and the means to grow food will probably be able to produce ample amounts of food. It is everyone else who will struggle to achieve a subsistence level of food production. Those that fail will probably die from starvation.

The knowledge required for successful agricultural production needs to survive the collapse. Books on the subject are a good start. A much greater resource are people who are already successful at propagation of food plants and raising livestock. Agriculture at any level is more complicated that putting seeds in the ground or letting a herd roam free. There will be local conditions that determine best chances of success. Soil and weather patterns vary widely at surprisingly small scales. If someone you know has knowledge like this, make them your new best friend.

Historic techniques for farming will be very useful. Many modern crops and farms are dependent on pesticides and fertilizer. Unless someone knows how to continue making these chemicals, those supplies will quickly run out and in some cases expire. Ideally, the knowledge required is more than just historical farming techniques as many of them were destructive to either the environment at large, water sources and soil quality. The best knowledge to have are the low technology techniques for treating current agriculture problems. A good example of what I mean is how flies around cattle can spread pink eye around the herd. Currently this is usually controlled by a bovine insect repellent sprayed over the cattle. It works great at keeping flies away, but after the collapse the industry and transportation infrastructure may not be present or reliable. A low technology solution is to feed the cattle garlic. Something in the garlic makes the cattle less appetizing. You may not notice less flies around the herd as you would with the insecticide, but the infection rates of pink eye will go down, and isn’t that the problem that needed solving? With the prevalence of garlic worldwide, this solution for pink eye cold be done by almost any cattle farmer (I’m not sure if garlic would affect milk taste in a dairy cow). My point is, all the farmer needs is to grow some garlic and he/she has something with multiple uses and is dependent on nobody to do it.

After subsistence level agriculture, comes increasing levels of food security, wealth and time. Historically we moved beyond subsistence farming by improving techniques and creating new techniques, new hybrid crops and breeding animals to better suit local conditions. This was achieved through research, experimentation and trial and error. After a collapse, research and experimentation will probably stop, leaving just trial and error and people who know better slowly spreading the best techniques through word of mouth.

As society begins to reform, places with food will become boom towns and places without will disappear. Sustainable agriculture is the best way towards a stable society.

From extreme weather related disasters to economic collapse, danger is a very real part of daily life. Risk is part of every activity humans do everyday. Risk can apply to our safety, economic, political, environmental and social spheres. There is a risk when cooking breakfast, there is a risk when driving a car there are risks when you invest money and there are risks when you tell someone you love them for the first time. Basically, because life is so risky, people feel the need to mitigate risk wherever possible and prepare for when disaster strikes. Some types of risk human beings are very good at evaluating, other types not so much.

Natural Disaster: Tornado (source: tornado-facts.com)

Risk is made up of two parts. The severity and the frequency. Both the severity or consequences and the frequency are essential for understanding the risk. Events that have a low severity and a low frequency therefore are low risk and are generally considered to be safe.

Risk Matrix for Classifying Risk Types (source: erris.org)

The danger comes from events that have either high severity or high frequency (or both). If an event has high severity and high frequency, it is necessarily very dangerous. A great example of these types of events are hurricanes. They happen every year and cause significant damage every year. Even if you aren’t directly affected by a hurricane, you are reminded of the last time you where hit with every hurricane.
Where humans become confused about risk is when we are afraid at the same time. If we are for example afraid of nuclear meltdown, then we will rank a nuclear meltdown as a more significant risk. This is referred to as the dread factor. The dread factor is a dangerous thing to ignore. With finite resources for disaster preparedness and risk reduction giving into fear will cause a real risk to be ignored. I’m not suggesting that the risks we dread are not dangerous, just that it is easy to over inflate their importance to our time, money and effort.

Humans have a technology bias. We feel that man made disasters are inherently riskier. This is partly due to the dread factor regarding man made disasters but it is also due to a willful down playing the risk from natural disasters. Severe weather can happen anywhere on the planet and happens very frequently. Man made disasters can also happen anywhere, but they do not happen nearly as frequently.

Man Made Disaster: The Kuait Oil fires (source: disasterium.com)

Statistics are necessary for knowing what the likelihood of any event occurring could be. The good news is you don’t need to be particularly strong in math to do this. What is really important is the ranking and directing more resources to the top ranking items.
Statistics can also be used to highlight risk or hide risk. That is assuming people will read the statistic correctly. The term 100 year storm is often interpreted as a storm that comes every 100 years. It actually refers to a storm that historically only occur once in a 100 year period. The difference is you can have a 100 year storm occur two years in a row or more.

I have found some ways to learn what you are most at risk for/from. The news is a good source, if you read about forest fires nearby, then you are probably at risk from forest fires in general. Try to read the news as factually as possible. Ignore any hype and sensationalism.

Next, ask your family for a list of any health problems and causes of death. Many diseases are genetic and knowing what you may affect you can give you time to delay or stop it all together. If all your grandparents died of heart disease, then action today can prevent that fate for you.

Next, call your insurance company. Insurance companies are in the business of estimating risk. The more expensive the coverage is, the more likely that event is to occur. Another question to ask is if there is anything they won’t cover for where you live. If an insurance company won’t sell you flood insurance, I can almost guarantee that you live on a flood plain and a flood is in your very near future.

Finally, most risk can be averted just by paying attention. When we are alert and attentive we will act sooner and are significantly more likely to be prepared.

Storm-water ponds are the closest alternative source of water for many people living in urban areas. In an emergency this source of water may be all that is available to you. Eventually any water you have stored will be consumed and the water in a storm-water pond may be the difference between life and death. With the proper treatment your local storm-water pond can be a great backup source of drinking water.

Industrial storm-water pond (source: info.evergreen.ca)

Storm-water presents a unique set of challenges during treatment. Because storm-water ponds collect surface water, the water is exposed to all the contaminants on the ground in the catchment area. This includes but is not limited to pesticides and fertilizers applied to lawns, motor oil and gasoline leaking from vehicles and litter like cigarette buts. It all ends up is the storm-water pond. Those chemicals are already in storm-water ponds on a normal day. During an emergency there may be additional contamination from sewage runoff from an overloaded or broken sewage system. The water in the pond will also contain all the microorganisms like ecoli, giardia and cryptosporidium normally in surface water. Any one of these will make you very sick if you get infected with them.
Finally, there will be high levels of nitrates in storm-water ponds. Too much nitrates consumed by young children can cause blue baby syndrome.

The first step in treating water from a storm-water pond is straining. Straining the water through a cloth or loose sand filter will remove large particles (ones you could pick up with your fingers). Remove as much of the suspended particles from the water as you can. Straining the water first will extend the life of your proper water filter.

If you have a clarifying agent like aluminum sulfate, this is the best time to add it to the water. It will make contaminants too small to be filtered become attracted to each other and become significantly larger. Larger particles are easier to remove from the water. Let the water sit still for at least 30 minutes without disturbing it. All the newly formed large particles (called floc) will sink to the bottom. When you take the water from this container, make sure you leave the majority of the settled material at the bottom of the container.

Urban Storm-water pond (source: greenbmp.blogspot.com)

The next step is to filter the water. Filter the water even if it looks clear, the human eye is five times too weak to detect dangerous levels of particles. Filter the water at least once through an activated carbon filter. Activated carbon is known to remove many different chemicals from water including pesticides, chlorine and fluoride. Activated carbon is not the same as charcoal. Charcoal is similar, it can remove toxins from water but it is nowhere near the efficiency of activated carbon.

The third step is oxidation. Oxidation will help with disinfection as most disinfectant chemicals are also oxidizers. Chemicals like sodium hypochlorite and potassium permanganate are both oxidizers and disinfectants. Oxidation will break down many of the remaining contaminants and inactivate many of the remaining bacteria. Keep adding the oxidizer/disinfectant till you can detect a residual after 20 minutes. The 20 minutes is the minimum you should wait for a gallon of water. Wait longer for larger volumes. This is because oxidation is a chemical reaction that isn’t instant. It needs time to complete the reaction.

The fourth step is to filter the water again. Filtering again is necessary because the disinfection/oxidation step will create some potentially carcinogenic byproducts. We filter before oxidation to minimize the amount of chlorine (or other chemical) and to limit the possibility of forming dangerous byproducts. We filter the second time to remove any byproducts that have been formed.

The final step is to boil the water. This will help with disinfection, but the main goal of boiling at this point is to remove any volatile chemicals. Any chemical with a boiling point lower than water will be removed after boiling.

A note about disinfection. If all of these steps are followed there is no need for a step dedicated for disinfection. Between the oxidation and the boiling of the water any microorganisms will be inactivated. If you are storing the water for a long time then add some sodium hypochlorite for a residual disinfectant. The residual disinfectant will prevent the water from becoming recontaminated before you drink it.

One additional possible step is to aerate the water. Ponds are frequently stagnant. Stagnant water is green with algae, it smells bad and tastes worse. After the water is made potable, transfer the water back and forth between two glasses. This adds oxygen to the water and will make the water taste better.

This may seem like a lot of work for something as small as a storm-water pond. What I have described are the basic steps to turn the potentially toxic water in the pond into clean and safe drinking water.

Are you thinking about starting to store water? How about emergency water treatment? Getting started can be a very daunting task. Where should efforts be focused? What pitfalls should be avoided? This article will explore a few of the mistakes I see people make when they start to take their personal water security seriously

The very first thing to learn is that there is no magic bullet. There is never a single product or technique which will always make water safe to drink. Combining, knowledge, multiple storage/treatment techniques and multiple products for storage/treatment is the best way to guarantee a safe source of drinking water for yourself and your family. This logic or philosophy of combining as many protections as possible is used by municipal water systems all across North America. It is referred to as a multi-barrier approach and it boils down to having many different protective measures to prevent contamination, in the event that one barrier fails, there are still many others in place. To put it in layman’s terms, when it comes to water security, it isn’t a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket.

Marketing campaigns will make all sorts of claims about water products. Some will be irrelevant, like claims of BPA free plastic when the product is made from a type of plastic that never had BPA. Other claims will be over stated. The claim that is most often overstated is the number of times a water treatment product can be used. The quality of the water being treated is too variable for any company to give you an absolute number of times. This might not be done to deceive you. It could just be that the water they tested the product with was easier to treat then your water. Remember that no product will make the water perfect. They will make the water safer when used correctly, if used incorrectly many water treatment products can make the water significantly more dangerous to drink.

Water needs to be stored in an appropriate container. This container needs to be able to physically hold the weight of the water and not leach any chemicals into the water. Assuming any garbage can sized container is appropriate will at best lead to soggy disappointment and at worst a severe case of gastrointestinal disease. For more information on water storage, read The Why? How? and How Much? of Water Storage?

Once your water is stored it needs to be kept safe. Water can become contaminated at any time. Anytime the container is open there is potential for contamination to occur. Read this article to find out what to do when your backup source of water becomes contaminated. The assumption that water only needs to be treated once is false. What was once safe to drink may be very dangerous when you need it if your aren’t protective of your supply. Water can turn stagnant when stored for long periods of time. Stagnation while not a health hazard is a taste hazard. Stagnant water tastes bad. Adding air to the water is how you relieve stagnation. Adding air is as simple as passing the water from one glass to another repeatedly or stirring the reservoir. The goal is to increase surface contact between the atmosphere and the water. It is important that aeration of the water will also remove the remaining chlorine (if any was present) in the water. If you are aerating the reservoir make sure you add some more disinfectant. Do this so you can keep your disinfectant residual high enough to keep the water contamination free.

Another mistake people make, is they store water but make no changes for reducing the water they use. Forgetting to change behavior during a crisis is probably the biggest mistake beginners make. Different situations require different behavior, this applies to your personal water use. You will be amazed at how much water is used if you aren’t careful. What could last a week might be used in a day and then you will understand the true value of water conservation. This mistake can also happen in more than just your water use. For more information on water conservation read why water conservation is a prepper’s must do.

The single biggest mistake beginners is they assume that they can learn how to treat water later. Later becomes too late and then it can become fatal. It is very difficult to learn something complicated like water treatment when your life depends on it. Learning as much as you can before an emergency strikes is the single best thing you can do to stay safe.

This article covers just a few of the common mistakes I see people make when they start taking their water security more seriously. There are many more mistakes that can be made and no one person has the perfect solution to them all. Water security is something that needs to be tailored to each person or family’s needs. Have you found any common mistakes while preparing for water shortages? If so, leave a comment below, I would love to hear them.

Storing water is often the fist step in becoming more prepared. People need water everyday for a variety of reasons. Humans can go up to three days without water, however the effects of dehydration can be felt in as little as a few hours if you aren’t careful. In an emergency water use and water needs will change and they will never change in ways where you need less water.

On the surface storing water is just filling containers with water and walking away. If that is all you do then you will regret walking away relatively quickly. The only thing worse than ignoring your stored water is not having any stored water.

Why store water? It buys you time. Time to “wait it out” or time to find more water. This time will allow you to focus on and accomplish other tasks. Other demands for your time will abound in even a minor emergency. If keeping some water around means you can focus on security or damage control then it is definitely worth the effort. I have written another article about why a back up supply of water is important.

Plastic Bottles are a Simple Way to Store Water (source: quiet-environmentalist.com)

How water can be stored depends on a few factors. Cost and storage space are the biggest factors affecting how you store water. Purchasing bottled water is a good way to start for small places with small amounts of storage. Bottled water is can be very expensive if you want to store a lot of water (more than 72hrs).

The next option is a larger container designed holding water. These containers are available is almost every size. If you can’t find the size you want in a store, there are companies that can make custom shapes and sizes. There are very few limits to the type of container. I mentioned earlier that the container needs to be designed for water. This is for two reasons. First, not all plastics are created equal. Some plastics can leach harmful chemicals like BPA into the water. The best type of plastic is high density polyethelene (HDPE). HDPE is used on all sorts of applications, including water/chemical tanks and watermains. Look for the symbol of a triange made of arrows around the number 2 and the letters HDPE underneath to make sure it is the correct one.

HDPE Symbol (source: termoplasticos.com)

Second, water is heavy. One liter of water weighs one kilogram (2.2 pounds). If the container isn’t designed for water there is a good chance it will break. For example a rain barrel holds around 400L, that barrel full of water will weigh over 400kg (or approximately 881lbs). Below is a photo of a 1000L container, when full this container weighs one metric tonne (1000kg or 2204lbs). The surface under this container needs to be secure and able to support the weight. You also need to factor this weight into the support for the container and the shelving unit you store the water on.

Larger tanks need to be air tight. Otherwise the water remains open to contamination. Read here to learn what to do when your back up source of water becomes contaminated. The access point if it is on the top also needs to be air tight when closed. The access point needs to be raised above the rest of the tank so no water/cleaners/dust flows into the tank. If the water does become contaminated, read What to do when your back up supply is contaminated. The tank will also need a spigot for accessing the water in the tank. The spigot should be installed just above the bottom of the tank (like it is in the picture above). Keeping the spigot just off the bottom avoids drawing any sediment that has settled on the bottom of the tank. Raising the spigot also makes it easier to fill containers.

There is are many theories for what kind of container is best. One big one or many little ones or a combination of sizes. This is a decision everyone needs to decide for themselves. The general theory for using small bottles is that you can rotate your supply and if a small container becomes contaminated or leaks then you still have a safe supply in other bottles. The general theory in support of large containers is that you can store a lot more water. You can also put pumps into large tanks an pump water to other areas. With a pump and some tubing you can have a back up plumbing system or pump directly into your existing plumbing.

Now for the big question, how much water do you need to store? According to the USGS, the average American household uses 80 to 100 gallons per person of water a day (302 to 378 L/person/day). Now this is for ALL uses, many of which are in our appliances like dishwashers and washing machines. But if you want everything to be EXACTLY as normal, then 100 gallons per person per day is what you need to store. A family of four, will need 400 gallons/day and most emergencies are longer than one day. This will quickly become an unreasonable amount of water to store. This is where water conservation comes in. Using less water makes your supply last longer. I can’t give you a minimum storage volume. The minimum amount of water that a human needs is variable on too many factors, like age (seniors and babies need more), climate, external temperature (hot and cold), altitude, health conditions, illnesses, type of disaster (some require a lot more washing), pregnancy, activity level, existing hydration levels and this list can be a lot longer. I will say this, having more water than you need is better than not having enough. Listen to what your local authorities are recommending you store for your area and treat that as a minimum. The correct answer of how much water to store is in between the 100 gal/person/day and the minimum recommended for your area and time of year.

I hope this article helped you understand a little more about the importance of storing water and a lot more on how to get your water supply started. Everyone’s water storage solution is unique to them. Balancing space and money mean that you will have to develop a system that works for you.

First off a bit of a disclaimer, I am fully aware that zombies are not real. I am however highly entertained by zombies and all things undead. Since the Omega Man Journal is about water and survival, that lead to the obvious thought experiment of what challenges a zombie outbreak would have on our ability to get safe drinking water.

Zombie Rage Face (zombieambience.com)

The first thing to appear after the dead rise will be panic. Fear will be rampant and many people will be operating on their fight or flight instincts others will be holed up at home. This includes the people who work at municipal water treatment plants. Water facilities, although automated still depend heavily on people to operate them. When those people stop going to work or are already zombie chow then the water will stop shortly thereafter. To see what it would look like when a water system gets shut down and roughly how long it would take read Grid Shutdown: How Long Will The Water Last. The same will be true of the sewage systems. Read Grid Shutdown: Why Is There S#!t In My Basement, Sewage Emergency: Thunder Bay Flooding and A City Without Sanitation to see just how disgusting our once clean (or not so clean) cities will become.

Zombie Horde (geektyrant.com)

Speaking of sanitation, people will die from unsanitary conditions. That means dead bodies, not just zombies, but regular dead bodies. Cholera is an excellent example of a waterborne disease that is a direct result of decomposing animal tissues in a water supply. Thirst will drive people to the nearest supply of water, then many will die on the banks and contaminate the lakes and rivers. Remember at this point I’m not talking about zombie contamination of water sources. That’s coming up later. This is a real danger when thirsty people or animals die in water supplies.

Depending on how zombies are created there may be a serious water vulernability. There are already bacteria, viruses, parasites and other micro-organisms that use both water and human bodies as part of their natural life cycle. Typically we call the effect of these micro-organisms “water borne disease”. Also there are already parasites that can take control of other organisms even to the point of making the host suicidal. Specifically there is a fungus that will radically alter the behaviour of ants turning them into zombie ants. (read more about zombie ants). We are talking about total control of the host for the benefit of the parasite. Finally there are countless micro-organisms and insects that thrive and depend on rotting flesh to survive either for food or as a vital part of a life cycle stage like maggots turning into flies.

Bacteria thrive on and cause decomposition of deceased organic matter

Those three characteristics which already exist, put a zombie making organism on the edge of being possible. Nature has already made all the organisms necessary to create a zombie, luckily for now the necessary skills are in different organisms and target different organisms. The problem is, if nature caused one organism to eat rotting flesh, it can teach another organism to do the same. Same thing with learning to disperse through water and to take control of other organisms.

Zombie Ant With Fungus Growing Out Of Its Head (nationalgeographic.com)

Let’s assume this is the cause of zombification, what then can anyone do to protect themselves? The good news is that modern water treatment is very good at removing and inactivating micro-organisms. The combination of chemically assisted filtration and disinfection should (if done correctly) remove 99.999% of micro-organisms. Depending on the size of this fictitious zombie bug/parasite/virus it might be possible to remove even more than 99.999% if it is on the large end of the size scale. If it is a virus, which is the smallest type of micro-organism then removing 100% of the z-virus will be next to impossible. That means we better hope that there is a disinfection method that can kill the virus either chlorine, UV, ozone or boiling.

Zombies Again (beyondhollywood.com)

One thing many people haven’t thought about when they are talking about zombies and water. Water is very heavy. If you have to haul water from its source to your secure facility it will become very difficult to run at the same time. Now vehicles are an option as are hand carts and if you have the resources pumps and pipes are best. Just remember that they are all noisier and may attract unwanted attention from nearby zombies.

Those are some of the challenges I see affecting our ability to drink safe potable water in the event of a zombie outbreak. I tried to be as true to real science as is possible when talking about zombies. At the very least I hope you were entertained. Can you think of anything I missed?